Riot Games lead champion designer August Browning recently shed light on why Flash remains in League of Legends despite years of internal debate about removing it. A stream clip that’s been making rounds across the community shows August walking through the reasoning behind keeping the game’s most powerful summoner spell.
The core argument is simple. Flash enables the highlight moments that define League. Instant engages, clutch escapes, objective steals, and wall-hop outplays all rely on Flash. Without it, the game loses much of its spectacle and skill expression.
August points to Flash’s role in pacing the game. Early on, it acts as a safety valve against oppressive ganks, letting players survive aggressive junglers. Later, it becomes the tool that breaks stalemates and forces fights. Teams use Flash to start fights they couldn’t otherwise take, turning defensive stalls into explosive teamfights.
The bigger issue is systemic. League has evolved with Flash as a foundational assumption. Every champion is balanced around players having access to a 400-range instant blink. Champion kits, ability ranges, engagement patterns—all of it factors in Flash. Removing it would require rebuilding combat from the ground up.
Despite August’s explanation focusing on the keep-or-remove question, Flash has actually been nerfed repeatedly throughout League‘s history. Early versions had significantly longer range, lower cooldowns, and could disjoint incoming projectiles—meaning players could delete targeted abilities and tower shots mid-flight by flashing.
Riot stripped away these mechanics over time, reducing its range and increasing its cooldown to the current 300 seconds. There was even a brief period after heavy nerfs when Ghost became the dominant choice before Flash reclaimed its throne.
Flash remains the most-selected summoner spell across nearly every role and skill level. Junglers pair it with Smite. Laners take it alongside their role-specific second spell. Its offensive and defensive flexibility makes it irreplaceable.
In professional play, Flash defines entire strategies. Teams track enemy Flash cooldowns religiously, timing engages around windows when key targets lack escape tools. Iconic plays like Flash-Malphite ultimates or Flash-Smite objective steals routinely decide tournament matches. Broadcast analysts call out Flash timers constantly because the spell’s availability fundamentally changes what’s possible in a fight.
Other MOBAs handle instant mobility differently. Dota‘s Blink Dagger offers similar repositioning but goes on cooldown when you take damage. League deliberately removed Flash’s projectile-dodging capability to differentiate itself and prevent impossible-to-balance scenarios.
